Lucidone suppresses dengue viral replication through the induction of heme oxygenase-1

ABSTRACTDengue virus (DENV) infection causes life-threatening diseases such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. Currently, there is no effective therapeutic agent or vaccine against DENV infection; hence, there is an urgent need to discover anti-DENV agents. The potential therapeutic efficacy of lucidone was first evaluated in vivo using a DENV-infected Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) suckling mouse model by monitoring body weight, clinical score, survival rate, and viral titer. We found that lucidone effectively protected mice from DENV infection by sustaining survival rate and reducing viral titers in DENV-infected ICR suckling mice. Then, the anti-DENV activity of lucidone was confirmed by western blotting and quantitative-reverse-transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis, with an EC50 value of 25 ± 3 μM. Lucidone significantly induced heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) production against DENV replication by inhibiting DENV NS2B/3 protease activity to induce the DENV-suppressed antivi...